DEATH NOTE REVIEW

Arielle Corriveau
Contributor

Death Note. The story of Light, a young man who finds a notebook that kills anyone with their name written in it, and L, the detective trying to stop his killing spree. A famous work that made its movie infamous before it even came out. The original manga and anime were masterpieces. But would Netflix be able to adapt it properly into a movie?

No.

Despite failing to adapt Death Note correctly, they did not fail at making an okay movie. There were some elements I enjoyed, like the atmosphere, the lighting that made most things seem dark and mysterious, and some scenes, like the homecoming dance.

But was it that good? Not really. The major changes to the original work were the characters. They made Light and L more human. They lost their fearless and extremely confident personalities by becoming more vulnerable, more affected by what is going on with people around them.

And if it made watchers somehow identify more to Light and L, it made their confrontations incredibly tasteless. Their fights, both verbal and physical, were now driven by anger, revenge, and even fear, which made them seem sometimes pathetic, instead of the intense psychological duels by two strong characters which was a huge strength of both the Death Note anime and manga.

L’s actor was good because of his mannerism that truly showed that he was a very peculiar detective, and added more to his diluted character. Light wasn’t as quite as great, and Mia was incredibly boring and predictable. Ryuk was not very present, but enjoyable during the scenes where he was.

The last few ending scenes were the strongest of the entire movie, but, sadly, it simply didn’t save the movie from being forgettable. It left me with a feeling that there had to be something more…